2013 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix second practice

Red Bull took their customary positions at the head of the times sheets in the second practice session. Sebastian Vettel led Mark Webber by a tenth of a second.

However Romain Grosjean, who was quickest in the first session, never really got to show his potential as his run on the softer tyres was spoiled by a braking problem.

He had other problems during the session and pulled into the pits with eight minutes remaining.

Lewis Hamilton ended the session third quickest but was unhappy during his long run, concerned about the Mercedes’ pace and struggling to get free of traffic.

With Grosjean down in 12th, Kimi Raikkonen was the fastest of the two Lotuses in fourth place, and showed promising performance on his long run.

Both McLaren drivers were well in the top ten, separated by just four thousandths of a second, with Sergio Perez seven-tenths of a second off Vettel in sixth place.

The Ferrari drivers appeared to have better pace, both in the top ten, separated by Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber.

Some drivers experienced tyre problems during the session including Jenson Button and Paul di Resta, who both had punctures. Max Chilton also had a spin at the exit of turn one, without hitting anything.

Raikkonen was super fast on race runs with very little or no degradation on softs. He was consistently faster in 2nd and 3rd sector than both RBs on mediums. Lotus 1 stopping for sure. RB on the other hand had a fair amount of tire deg on softs. They ran ~15 laps or smth like that on them and drop of was something like 1,5-2s. They had zero deg on medium, much like anyone else. 40 laps on a single medium set could be pushing it a bit for them so maybe OOP. Remains to be seen. Lotus is definitely the dark horse.

In FP1, Kimi was in the short wheelbase car, while Grosjean was in the long wheelbase version.
Can anyone tell me if it was the same in the afternoon, or if Kimi reverted to the long wheelbase car?
Just wondering if that was to do with his better performance in FP2?
Cheers

The Mercedes and Lotuses will be 3-6 tenths down, the Ferraris 5 to 8 tenths, and I’m not sure anyone else can spoil the top eight… another boring vettel-fest. The only redeeming factor – his alternator might fail (thank you Renault.)